If you’re already doing this great! I’d LOVE to hear how much money you’ve already made/saved. If not make sure you read this. As far as I’m concerned everyone should be taking advantage of this tool – it’s free, foolproof and there’s zero risk attached

Regular readers will know this is one of my favourite Insider’s Edge topics.

I’m talking about cashback websites.

I love them because they’re so effective.

If you ever shop online make sure you’ve signed up for a free TopCashBack or Quidco account.

(And if you’ve already got an account with either of these cashback websites – use it!)

I know it takes a while to get in the habit, but if you’re not doing this already then you really are missing out on FREE money.

I’m not talking about insignificant amounts either…

Sometimes simply by using a cashback link you can save (or make, however you want to look at it) £50, £100 or £150 for doing something you were already doing.

It literally only takes an extra 20 – 30 seconds to check a cashback website to see if they’ve got the link you can use.

Here’s a recent example…

Sophie and I are off to Amsterdam next week and we did a bit of research trying to find the lowest price for our first hotel.

Once we’d found it I checked to see if the same retailer was on TopCashBack and they were. We used their link and made £22 cashback.

We’d already found the lowest price online but because this retailer was registered with TopCashBack we were able to get this extra free.

Last month we switched our Broadband package to fibre optic and made just over £100 in cashback.

So in total that’s £122 for virtually no work

I know it’s hard to get in the habit of using cashback sites. I recommend putting links to them in your bookmarks toolbar or folder – that way you’ll keep being reminded that they’re there. Then the next time you want to buy a train ticket or an insurance policy or an electrical item instead of buying it there and then, spend 30 seconds checking on TopCashBack or Quidco to see if the same retailer is on there. If they are, use the link they give you to go through to the retailer and make the purchase as usual.

That’s it!

You might find some items, like flight tickets and electrical items only give you 1% – 3% cashback. The thing it’s still worth doing, because it all adds up eventually. Other items like hotel bookings and car rental can make between 5% – 25% or more in cashback.

Then there are the items or services (particularly mobile phone contracts or insurance – in fact almost anything that involves a rolling contract) that can make you really significant amounts – like £150 just for taking out a mobile phone contract!

Here’s an example of some of the offers showing up there today – these are 7 companies I’m sure you’ve heard of. The deals change all the time (go up and go down with different retailers) but once a retailer is on board they’ll always have some sort of deal on.

(There are hundreds more retailers like this on these sites)

I’m hooked on cashback sites which is why I’ve covered this in Insider’s Edge before not once but TWICE.

Here: Why you’ll lose money if you don’t do this

and

Here: How I saved £70.99 in 8 clicks

Yes, I’m obsessed.

The reason I wanted to give you a quick update today is because TopCashBack (my preferred of the two major Cashback sites) has just started up a new membership tier for more frequent users.

If you go for this option (and they’re letting everyone try it first for 3 months) you get 5% cashback on ‘topups’ in 1% (this is like an extra bonus you get from TopCashBack). Your refer-a-friend rate also goes up by £2.50 and there are a few other not-quite-so-exciting perks. The only downside is that if you do decide to stick with this premium membership they deduct £5 of your cashback a year.

If you’re a heavy user you should make that back easily but if you’re not you might want to stick with the free, ‘standard’ account which doesn’t deduct £5 of your earnings.

Either way I can’t stress how effective these sites are.

These are the two I recommend:

TopCashBack

and

Quidco